Rachel Maddow

I mean, same goes presumably with the cuts to the firefighters cancer registry, which Donald Trump himself created. That just got cut. Did Donald Trump want to cut that? Who knows? These cuts, they just, I don't know, they sort of make themselves. So there's them breaking stuff. There's them cutting stuff that they don't even appear to know they are cutting.

The third bucket, I think, is stuff they do mean to cut, and they're quite gleeful about it. Things like, you know, HIV prevention. They're delighted to cut that. Libraries, museums, the part of the National Highway Transportation Safety Board that oversees the self-driving cars at Elon Musk's Tesla company. Yeah, they're delighted to get rid of all that sort of stuff.

The third bucket, I think, is stuff they do mean to cut, and they're quite gleeful about it. Things like, you know, HIV prevention. They're delighted to cut that. Libraries, museums, the part of the National Highway Transportation Safety Board that oversees the self-driving cars at Elon Musk's Tesla company. Yeah, they're delighted to get rid of all that sort of stuff.

So these are just all the things that we can observe, right? We can observe them smashing stuff up so it doesn't work, cutting stuff that they don't understand and that maybe isn't even on purpose. We do see them cutting stuff on purpose as well. But now we're getting to what I think of as the really heavy part of it, the really heavy part of this authoritarian project.

So these are just all the things that we can observe, right? We can observe them smashing stuff up so it doesn't work, cutting stuff that they don't understand and that maybe isn't even on purpose. We do see them cutting stuff on purpose as well. But now we're getting to what I think of as the really heavy part of it, the really heavy part of this authoritarian project.

Because some of the stuff that they have been doing that has seemed inexplicable is starting to become explicable, is starting to become understandable. Because part of what we are now seeing, this many weeks into this administration,

Because some of the stuff that they have been doing that has seemed inexplicable is starting to become explicable, is starting to become understandable. Because part of what we are now seeing, this many weeks into this administration,

is that when it has appeared that they're just messing with various agencies or trying to access various data systems within agencies, it's not a pointless rummaging that they are doing there. It's not just rummaging around in there and flipping switches and seeing what breaks.

is that when it has appeared that they're just messing with various agencies or trying to access various data systems within agencies, it's not a pointless rummaging that they are doing there. It's not just rummaging around in there and flipping switches and seeing what breaks.

Part of what is now emerging is that they've been in these government systems because they're trying to use the government to hurt people as much as they can.

Part of what is now emerging is that they've been in these government systems because they're trying to use the government to hurt people as much as they can.

So, for example, it turns out they were messing with all the information on international students in a government database so they could target individual international students to snatch them off the street and arrest them and throw them in immigration prisons.

So, for example, it turns out they were messing with all the information on international students in a government database so they could target individual international students to snatch them off the street and arrest them and throw them in immigration prisons.

Turns out they were messing with sensitive systems inside the IRS and the Treasury, at least in part, so they could use that data to go after immigrants as well.

Turns out they were messing with sensitive systems inside the IRS and the Treasury, at least in part, so they could use that data to go after immigrants as well.

Turns out they were messing with sensitive systems inside the Social Security Administration because they have taught themselves that one way you can really destroy people's lives in this country is if you take the names of living people and declare them dead inside the Social Security Administration. And now on top of that, today, something new.

Turns out they were messing with sensitive systems inside the Social Security Administration because they have taught themselves that one way you can really destroy people's lives in this country is if you take the names of living people and declare them dead inside the Social Security Administration. And now on top of that, today, something new.

As we have been watching the actions of this government, and particularly the opaque, hard-to-parse actions of this doge entity that has been set up under the auspices of the president's top campaign donor, and none of us are allowed to know what they're doing, as we've been trying to figure out what they're actually doing and why, we've now got a brand new set of allegations that we've never encountered before.

As we have been watching the actions of this government, and particularly the opaque, hard-to-parse actions of this doge entity that has been set up under the auspices of the president's top campaign donor, and none of us are allowed to know what they're doing, as we've been trying to figure out what they're actually doing and why, we've now got a brand new set of allegations that we've never encountered before.

And if these allegations are true, they suggest an apparently sort of a new sort of bucket, a new type of behavior from these guys that we are only learning about today thanks to a whistleblower in IT who has the technical skills to actually see what they're doing and who has now come forward to Congress and to the Office of Special Counsel, which protects whistleblowers.